Exit Calm@Leadmill Sheffield June 2008

Nicky Smith Exit Calm

And what a fantastic show delivered by Exit Calm in Sheffield last weekend. I ve meet lots of mates and had an smashing time.
I' ve seen hundreds of bands on the last 20 years but that night its already on my best top 3 ever.
Full review and lots of photos on the next days. Watch this space!

Here is in advance a video I recorded

You've got it all wrong-Exit Calm Thanks to Yvo for the editing help

Rocket Festival [End]

Me Becky Ward and Dave Fielding

Me and Dave

And here are the last photos from the Rocket Fest. Fantastic days on the mountains shrouded by beautiful mountains and great music and friends. Thanks to Dave&Becky and Jam for such a great time.

Dave Fielding Chillin




How the hell this new camera works?

Laughing at Dave Jokes

Becky playing...football?

By the time you see today this blog updated automatically I will be flying to see Exit Calm supporting The Music at the Leadmill in Sheffield. I hope to meet a lot of good friends there, Sean and Tony [Lefty] from Barnsley, Gaz&Ness from Lincoln, Jam, Oscar from Premia del Mal, Darlow, my tattoist Nigel [Biggy] from Barnsley too, etc, etc...
Lots of Exit Calm photos promised!.

Rocket Festival Granada [Part 3]

Fest sunset

Here is some random photos I took while we were on the Rocket festival. Its hard to choose the ones to upload here on the blog as I took sooo many.
But there you go

More Mud fights on sunday!

Mud fights

It was fun, but this one a bit unfair to be honest. I guess they could not find another female contender on the moment. Brave girl, even more because it was a bit chilli! But I guess been from GB they werent bothered it was probably like a hot summer for them!

Kids were shouting, 'fight, fight, fight!' lol

We had a gorgeous weather all the fest, no rain at all, although sometimes we had a bit of a chili wind [We were very high], and also some black clouds were seen on a far distance on the mountains. At some point you needed a jacket and suddenly it was a strong sun, to make it more feel like if we were in England.

nice ...err.. ginger crowd

Tent Dj. Wiked robots they moved along with the music


Lunch time

The view from the main stage from the Trash and Wasted bar.


That was the view from our camp site

yeeehaaaaa!!

Marcelle and Ruppert friends of Dave&Bex from Lincoln

Main stage and Jam on the right

Bored security bloke in a sunset


End of part 3

Pedro Vila

Rocket Festival Granada May 08 [Part 2]

Circo Abusivo

Later on it was time for Circo Abusivo. They did a sort of Balcanic, folk, Polka Irish, yiddish...well a mixture of stuff really. Most on the line of the pioneer of this genre Manu Chao when he played on the 80's with Mano Negra. They were very good and made everybody dance around. Dave said he enjoyed the band a lot.

Dance&live bands tent

Later that night I ended up on the dance tent until silly hours in the morning. Dance or die

The morning after, well a few hours after I needed a hole in the wall so we decided to go to Alhama town and also take the opportunity to see a little bit of the area.

Alhama de Granada Mountains

Andalusian village

Lake on the way to the Rocket Festival

The countryside was very beautiful. Alhama is a small village with tiny white houses in the middle of the mountains. Very typical andalusian if you ask me. Nice

Festival sunset

Discipulos de Otilia

That night was the time for the headlining acts. First we had Discipulos de Otilia a Barcelona based SKA band. I ve heard about this band before but never had the chance to see them live. Very intense SKA music and mad singers!
At the start of the concert the on the middle of the introduction chat the singer commented that he didnt know how to talk in English or spanish as he was surprised as well that all the people there were mostly English, when I shouted 'do it in Catalan [Not a very popular thing to do in Andalusia to be honest] !' which he did smiling at me...ha ha ...nice one...

Brilliant strings section

Mad

There were 2 singers, one dressed black and the other one white. It was really hard to make them a photo as they wouldnt stop for a second. Tireless!

Then we went to see the so awaited Pole dancer girl. She seemed very experienced and gathered a quite big crowd.
Amazing woman!

Pole Dancer

The next band on saturday night were The Bad Manners!! I ve never seen them before although I had a few opportunities back on the eighties. My friends though have seen them several times. Dave said he saw them on the Wicthwood in Ashton back at the time. But this time they were not gonna be a small club sort of band. They were huge! Brilliant musicians on the style of a big band. The kings of british SKA. I only was hoping they played 'Walking on the sunshine which is my favorite track...and they did! here is their funny video

Buster Bloodvessel, the singer, looked very different from the old videos I saw. He looked much older, but I guess time doesnt stop, does it? They were brilliant anyway, and very intense! Everybody was dancing around. They gathered without a doubt, the biggest crowd on the main stage. We agreed it was one of the highlights of the festival.
I took a few photos, but due to the beer intake they are a bit shitty, so apologizes for that. You cant dance and take photos at the same time, can you? :-D

There was no encore as the singer was exhausted, but they display their wide live experience well proved along all these years. I ve been told by my friends that Bad Manners were a bit controversial back on the 80s here in Spain as you could spot bone heads on their shows carrying far right wing t shirts and badges. But to be honest I didnt see a single one here. Good. I went to the backstage after the show. My friends werent bothered about. I guess Dave Fielding had enough of Backstage before on his life ;-) I had a couple of beers on the bar, courtesy of the organization, and went to the caravan were Buster Bloodvessel was. There was a lot of people around him, you know the typical after show stress. I wanted to take a photo with Buster but after stay about 5 minutes on the caravan and grab more of the free drinks were offered there I decided It was better to leave and go meet me friends.

Rocket Festival backstage bar

Time for the dance tent again that night , after The Bad Manners brilliant show.

End of part 2